Scotland's Eigg island to become completely self-sufficient in renewable energy - <AUTHOR> http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/01/greenest-island-world-201412783012455475.html <comment><USER3> This is nice, but sort of masks the reality. Providing a comfortable amount of electricity to a home is _easy_. It takes a few hundred watts to light, perhaps a few kilowatts to heat (although I'd imagine at 21p/kWh most of the islanders use propane or wood) and then a few hundred watts for a TV or computer.

They're not self-sufficient in _energy_. They're self sufficient in electricity generation, perhaps, but energy? All the really energy intensive processes that support their way of life - agriculture, manufacturing of goods - those are happening elsewhere. You can't simply equate household electricity usage with the average human's energy footprint, because the two are massively different.

There's a tendency in the west to ignore the painful truth which is that our actions and consumption has far reaching consequences. Everything you buy has an energy footprint, and for many things it's one that we outsource to China. It's great to say "UK carbon output down x%", but if it's because we moved manufacturing offshore, did we really make a difference? It's easy to blame China for emissions while pointing at our renewables as evidence of how good we are, but the reality is that those emissions are often made to service our needs.

<comment><USER4> So true - 100% electricity generation != 100% energy sufficiency.

What opened my eyes to this was David MacKay's wonderful (free) book:

[http://www.withouthotair.com](http://www.withouthotair.com)

<comment><USER3> That's a good recommendation! It's a fantastic book that does a great job of simplifying the energy equations into something understandable for most people. It really should be required reading for journalists and politicians dealing with this area. I think David MacKay was (for a while anyway) in some sort of scientific advice role for the government, but I can't imagine they listen to him very often...

<comment><USER5> David MacKay is Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. He's been in this role since 2009. Without hot air is excellent.

Look at this page [1] which shows the rough average consumption of a household in the uk, including non electrical consumption.

[http://www.withouthotair.com/c18/page_103.shtml](http://www.withouthotair.com/c18/page_103.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This isn't an isolated trend. Scotland as a country is targeting 100pct green energy by 2020, and should be at 50% by 2015.

[http://grist.org/list/scotland-100-percent-clean- energy-2020...](http://grist.org/list/scotland-100-percent-clean-energy-2020/)

<comment><USER7> It is not targeting "100% clean energy". It is targeting "100% clean electricity". In Scotland, many times more energy in the typical household is consumed by non-renewable gas and oil, than by electricity. The 2020 target for renewable heat consumption is only 11% because that is a far more difficult and larger problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the many fascinating things about Eigg is _An Sgùrr_ \- it's a (small) mountain made from a valley!

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Sg%C3%B9rr_%28Eigg%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Sg%C3%B9rr_%28Eigg%29)

<comment><USER9> "58.72 ± 0.07 million years ago" \- have to love that Wikipedian level of detail!

That actually looks really cool. I wanted to visit Skye first but Eigg is looking pretty attractive.

<comment><USER8> The "Small Isles" of Canna, Eigg, Muck and Rum have quite a lot of interesting geological stuff:

[http://www.lochabergeopark.org.uk/Pages/The_Small_Isles.asp](http://www.lochabergeopark.org.uk/Pages/The_Small_Isles.asp)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Islanders are used to rationing their power

That is key.

<comment><USER8> The mild temperatures there presumably help - I be surprised if they had many days above 25C or below 0C.

<comment><USER11> The article says that they cover the 90% of the energy from renewables. It's not vey clear if it's the 90% of the electricity or the 90% of all the energy requirements, where they should include cooking and heating. (Let's forget about gasoline and diesel for transportation.)

The Eigg island is part of the Inner Hebrides. According to Wikipedia, in this group of islands, in August the average hight is 15.7 °C (60.3 °F) and in February the average low is 2.2 °C (36 °F). [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Hebrides#Climate](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Hebrides#Climate) . From the article:

> _On days that are really sunny - or, more likely, really wet or windy - <USER2> > Electric has a useful way for dealing with excess energy. "We have heaters > in all the public spaces on the island, the two churches, the community > centre, [the shop and café] down at the pier. So we put free heating into > these buildings to keep the island's costs down and to keep the > infrastructure of the buildings dry," says Scott._

So, probably they don't have air conditioning (or they don't use it very much), and they are using a traditional no renewable energy source for heating.

<comment><USER12> _So, probably they don't have air conditioning_

Erm no. Air conditioning is not common in UK homes. What's much more likely is heating. I can't imagine a home not having heating in this part of Europe.

<comment><USER8> Careful modern designs can give you a "zero-heating" house - even in the North East of Scotland, which is a fair bit chillier than Eigg:

[http://www.ecbcs.org/docs/Annex_38_UK_Aberdeen.pdf](http://www.ecbcs.org/docs/Annex_38_UK_Aberdeen.pdf)

[I own a property that is at the other end of the spectrum from a "zero- heating" house - we have parts that are effectively impossible to heat, so we don't even try.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Apart from the part where it manufactures its own panels from its own resources.

</comment><comment><USER14> Quebec (~7 millions people) is at more than 90% green electricity, just saying.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HQ_supplies_2007.svg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HQ_supplies_2007.svg)

<comment><USER15> Hydroelectricity is renewable, but is it really green ?

<comment><USER16> It's not burning fossil fuels and is siphoning energy out of natural cycles. Sounds green to me. Developing it impacts the environment, but I would imagine it's fairly comparable to the construction of wind power farms, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Article mentions The Pictish Trail (@PictishTrail) but omits his recently launched record label run from Eigg - [http://lostmap.com/about/](http://lostmap.com/about/)

Disclaimer: He's a friend and former bandmate from uni. His music is awesome.

<comment><USER18> Oh cool, Alt Soc?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you're interested in hacking Scottish islands, then check out Tiree Tech Wave.

<comment><USER8> You should submit that to HN - looks rather cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> ...while they pollute China where the solar panels and turbines are manufactured...

</comment><comment><USER21> Solar panels have massive footprint, like leoedin already mentioned. The only way for islanders to be self-sufficient energetically is not to use electricity, and live in very small numbers. Sorry, technology is devastating. If not on your island, it will ruin landscapes somewhere else.</comment>


Pregel - distributed graph processing | DDI - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/pregel/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty cool - are there any in-development frameworks for Pregel, sort of like how Hadoop was with MapReduce?

<comment><USER3> We're working on Signal/Collect (<http://code.google.com/p/signal-collect/>), a parallel graph processing framework with a set of features that is similar to Pregel.

Other projects that are closely related to Pregel: Menthor (<http://lcavwww.epfl.ch/~hmiller/menthor/>) and Phoebus (<https://github.com/bhatti/phoebus>)

Other potentially interesting frameworks in the area of parallel graph processing: GraphLab (<http://www.graphlab.ml.cmu.edu/>), HipG (<http://www.few.vu.nl/~e.krepska/HipG/>), Apache HAMA (<http://incubator.apache.org/hama/>) and Parallel BGL (<http://osl.iu.edu/research/pbgl/>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool. Do you have to work at Google to use it?

<comment><USER5> I haven't heard of any publicly available implementations of Pregel, per se.

The Pregel paper does describe some other related and publicly available frameworks for graph algorithms, but I haven't played with any of those frameworks. Details are in the second last section of the paper: <http://www- bd.lip6.fr/ens/grbd2011/extra/SIGMOD10_pregel.pdf></comment></comment>


What are the Business Intelligence tools and how to use them? - <AUTHOR> http://gbksoft.com/blog/what-are-the-business-intelligence-tools-and-how-to-use-them/?utm_source=news.ycombinator.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=post_link&utm_content=comment <comment><AUTHOR> Talking about business trends in 2017, everyone is buzzing about big data, business intelligence, predictive analytics and other big words.</comment>


Npm v5.0.0 released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.npmjs.org/post/161081169345/v500 <comment><USER2> First of all: Thank you, yarn, for helping the community see the naked emperor. Deterministic builds by default are such an obvious (in retrospect) core requirement.

Couple questions:

Question 1: Does anyone else who's been around more than a couple years share my view that Yarn : NPM :: IO.JS : Node?

IOW: healthy competition, catalyst for necessary change, ultimately a bridge or stopgap.

Question 2: Any good comprehensive writeups on best practices?Committing lockfiles is a no-brainer. But what about globals? Per-node-version seems logical, but there are also semantic problems with "global" packages vs concept of executable binaries. I'd love to see a strong writeup outlining and defending a standard approach.

<comment><USER3> When io.js merged back into node.js the following happened:

1\. Node.js was abandoned and replaced with io.js.

2\. Io.js was relabelled as node.js.

3\. The node.js project was put under open governance via the creation of the Node Foundation.

This doesn't really compare to npm:

* The npm-cli's name is using npm Inc's trademark: giving it away would leave the company with no name or create unwanted ambiguity between npm Inc the company and npm-cli the (then) community-owned open source project unaffiliated with the company.

* Yarn does not share any source code directly with npm-cli, it's a complete reimplementation of a similar feature set. It's currently backed by a mirror of the npm registry but that's the extent of the overlap.

* The Node Foundation already exists and Yarn is already owned by the community. I could see Yarn joining the Node Foundation and the Node Foundation replacing its bundled dependency on the commercially owned npm-cli but even then npm Inc has nothing to contribute to the process.

Personally I would much rather see Yarn join the JavaScript Foundation because it speaks to the broader appeal of Yarn outside the traditional "Node community" and the politics involved in the latter and its close ties to npm Inc.

FWIW I consider the close ties between the Node project and npm Inc nothing more than a historical accident that has resulted in a conflict of interest that is overdue to be resolved by dropping npm-cli from the official releases.

Now that yarn is no longer distributed using npm (although it's still possible to install it that way) that seems more realistic than ever.

<comment><USER4> >resolved by dropping npm-cli from the official releases.

But that would break 7 years of documentation and tutorials, likely bad for newcomers and thus the ecosystem

<comment><USER5> so npm has created a huge vendor lock-in and we should live with it?!

<comment><USER6> "The only reason God could create the world in six days is, He didn't have to worry about backward compatibility."

<comment><USER7> LOL

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We dropped npm in favour of yarn a while back, but I imagine we'll switch back once the stable release is out. Our needs are perhaps simpler than most, but the key issues we were having with npm at the time were directly solved by yarn:

      1. Dependency install was taking too long.
      2. Inconsistent builds between devs because of no lock file.
      3. Could not search the registry from the command line in a timely manner.

Having just done a quick test on a random project, I'm pleased to see that all of those concerns are now taken care of, plus the install (for this project at least) is ~30% faster than it is with yarn.

<comment><USER9> Isn't npm shrinkwrap the npm "lockfile"?

<comment><USER10> Kinda. Shrinkwrap has been around for a while.

The new lockfile is basically shrinkwrap 2.0 using what's been learned since

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just tried on a couple of projects with a lot of dependencies, we moved to yarn a while ago due to performance issues and it seems to be resolved.

On cold cache: Yarn: 20.94 seconds NPM5: 21.11 seconds

With cache: Yarn: 10.35 seconds NPM5: 15.20 seconds

For some reason, when node_modules folder is still there, yarn exits in a couple hundres milliseconds but npm5 does something for around 5 seconds.

Haven't checked lock file / installation consistency stuff. Yarn has been great on that too so we have no intention to go back but this is a decent release.

<comment><USER12> Also ran some numbers here (with warm cache. node 6.10.3).

      * yarn: 25s
      * npm@5: 28s
      * npm@4: 63s
      * npm@3: 68s

So performance is now comparable, which is awesome, but I'd still stick to yarn because we have been burned too many times by npm v2/v3 with call stack issues and other errors. I don't have the energy (or the time/faith) to go through that again.

Competition is wonderful though. I'll check npm again in 6-12 months and see what the community thinks of it before switching again.

<comment><USER13> amen

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So happy with the --save by default. Someone at work kept installing new dependencies without save (they didn't knew about it, somehow). We then had an unusable package.json. I had to manually find directories in node_modules and install them on production -_-.

<comment><USER15> And I think this is a complete bs. I have to try the module and then make a conscious decision to use (save) it, not kind of save it first and then hope that it actually does what I want.

Like wtf, who thought that saving something you download maybe for the first time as a dependency is a good idea?

<comment><USER14> Most of the time when I do npm install it's for stuff I know I will need. If you want to check something out you can always just --no-save it.

<comment><USER16> Does uninstall default to --save too? Because if so, then your workflow doesn't even have to change gear. You just install it to check it out, you like it then do nothing, you don't like it then you can just `npm uninstall`, something you'd hopefully do anyway.

<comment><USER15> First time I hear about '\--save' for uninstall, but it doesn't make a difference in my case because I always install many things, test them all at once, then '\--save' what I need and 'rm -rf' the 'node_modules'. After that, 'npm i' gives me everything I need.

I still think this change is beyond stupid.

<comment><USER17> When you commit your changes, it's similarly easy to inspect package.json changes, and only commit the lines you want [1].

This change increases the chance that what you have working locally is reproducible from "source". IMHO that's a very important goal, while debate over convenience of omitting --save vs --no-save is superficial. Obviously there are 2 groups and one will be unhappy either way, but does that justify calling it "beyond stupid"? (I could maybe see that if you had actual data that 90% people want --no-save...)

Also, seems you can config old default by `npm config set save false` (with the risk one day you'll work on another machine and be surprised by uncustomized defaults). [https://twitter.com/maybekatz/status/859193277894991872](https://twitter.com/maybekatz/status/859193277894991872)

Docs are lacking, following up on [https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/5108](https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/5108)

[1] If your commit flow doesn't make this a pleasant experience — e.g. command-line git IMHO doesn't — you deserve better tools. I can recommend `git citool` for start — old and ugly UI, but fast, portable, has keyboard shortcuts, also very convenient for amending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're on Windows and want to give this thing a test drive, use `npm- windows-upgrade`:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted -Scope CurrentUser -Force

npm i -g npm-windows-upgrade

npm-windows-upgrade --npm-version latest

</comment><comment><USER19> > A new, standardised lockfile feature meant for cross-package-manager > compatibility (package-lock.json)

Surely it would be much better to follow standard lock file naming conventions and name the file package.lock

<comment><USER20> Or even package.lock.json

<comment><USER19> I had originally been for package.lock, but after reading right through the issue I now agree with your excellent suggestion of package.lock.json.

Rather than just talk here, I've posted against the issue suggesting this approach basically asking for up/down votes. [https://github.com/npm/npm/pull/16441#issuecomment-304458746](https://github.com/npm/npm/pull/16441#issuecomment-304458746)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I still want npm-search improved.

I want to be able to search by tag, constrained by license and with packages that use dependencies I already have installed floated to the top. There are so many ways this could be nicer.

</comment><comment><USER22> Its still not as fast as yarn FYI.

<comment><USER23> Yarn doesn't support all of npm's features. At least not as of a couple months ago when it 1) didn't support one of our needs at all, and 2) broke a couple NPM packages on install. This may or may not be part of why it's faster: it does less.

<comment> silver-banshee what are these npm's features that yarn doesn't support?

<comment><USER24> I do support and these issues come up all the time with yarn:

\- native packages are not well-supported by yarn yet, notably node-sass since it's so widely-used

\- no private module support

<comment><USER25> I also had a weird issue where for certain packages yarn would pick up a version which was older than what npm would. Not sure if this had anything to do with the fact that we have an internal npm mirror (that being said, yarn claims it picks up the .npmrc information, so even if it did, that would be a yarn bug).

In addition, yarn seems to increasingly be prioritizing its own default configs over what may be saved in my ~/.npmrc. Had several proxy issues after upgrading to a newer version of yarn that I didn't have earlier.

The reason I switched to yarn wholesale was because my existing npm based infrastructure worked seamlessly (at least to the extent that I was using npm features). But I've noticed that newer versions of yarn seem to have regressed in terms of npmrc support, which is a huge problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This might be a totally stupid question, but what does that mean?

        npm install npm@latest -g

        /usr/local/bin/npm -> /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npm-cli.js
        /usr/local/lib
        └── email@example.com

How do I install it? Or... it's not quite released yet after all?

Edit: nevermind, I found it --> [https://github.com/npm/npm/releases](https://github.com/npm/npm/releases) this is the 'prerelease' release.

<comment><USER27> Right now latest still points to v4. You can install 5 with:

        npm install -g npm@5

Then see:

        npm -g ls npm

Which returns:

        +-- firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This seems to be very similar to Gradle vs Buck (or Bazel).

Generally speaking the main tool is slow, or otherwise suboptimal but does a lot. A different tool is built with an emphasis on speed. Eventually, the main stream tools picks up the speed features of the other tool and then "wins" because it does more. (Side note: I have no idea when Gradle came out in comparison to Buck/Bazel) For context, Gradle in the 4.0 version is starting to really support build cache support.

Edit: this comment is a reaction to all the other comments I see here about yarn vs npm.

</comment><comment><USER29> How does this stack up against yarn now?

<comment><USER30> I built a project to compare yarn and npm. See [https://github.com/thomaschaaf/npm-vs- yarn](https://github.com/thomaschaaf/npm-vs-yarn)

The different shows how much better npm@5 is :)

It installs two node.js projects (react & ghost) and shows how long it takes to do under multiple scenarios (cold cache, installed and lockfile). It is automatically run each day. It also creates an average if one version is run multiple times.

<comment><USER31> That's really smart. I love how you're using Travis matrix builds for this, and publishing the results via the Google Sheets API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> >All installs will be saved by default

>since npm@3, npm will automatically update npm-shrinkwrap.json when you save

All installs update shrinkwrap then? doesn't that start to make it redundant to package.json in the first place now. Does this make git tracking package and shrinkwrap mandatory in-case you want to install, test but then roll back the version, as shrinkwrap will already have changed.

edit: Oh I'm supposed to --no-save now for that described flow?

</comment><comment><USER33> Seems like their catching up to Yarn, and finally they are there. I'm happy to ditch Yarn and go back to NPM once it's as good.

<comment><USER34> Why go back if you already migrated?

<comment><USER10> A ton of things either don't work or are harder with Yarn.

It's great at what it does, and great for the simple case, but it's only a subset of functionality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Someone told they now use hashes for versioning, like Nix, is this true?

Is it finally save to install 2 times and get 100% the same packages?

<comment><USER27> It's been that way for years, since shrinkwrap was invented.

<comment><USER35> Shrinkwrap did _not_ use hashes and did not guarantee deterministic installs. Subdependencies could still end up as different versions.

Even the shrinkwrap file itself contained a lot of trash and generated massive diff noise. I had a file full of scripts to make the shrinkwrap file usable and even then we had (production!!!) issues due to changing subdeps. We reworked our build processes to zip & deploy the exact code that passed the tests to work around that, but it was still a massive pain that installs at different points in time would yield different trees.

When yarn came out, I deleted a folder full of hacky scripts, cut my install time by 60% and finally got deterministic installs. Needless to say, I was ecstatic.

<comment><USER27> Shrink wrap versions subdependencies. Why would they end up as different versions?

<comment><USER36> npm used to have issues that if you had a shrinkwrap and a pre-existing node_modules directory and ran `npm install`, then npm would often report success but silently fail to make the node_modules directory actually match the shrinkwrap. ... After our build system ran into this issue once and built and deployed code to production with fatally mismatched dependencies, I wrote a hacky wrapper script which would double-check that node_modules really did match the shrinkwrap, and if not it would remove the directory entirely and re-run `npm install`... Thankfully this was fixed in npm v4.

<comment><USER27> OK that's a bug, but it's fixed for more than a year. Nobody in this entire thread has given a reason why a captured versions of the entire tree wouldn't produce deterministic output.

<comment><USER36> Yeah, it should only be bugs that cause subdependency versions to not match the shrinkwrap. Your question seemed valid. I can only guess others have run into similar issues as me and hadn't known if they were fixed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> npm desperately needs a flat install option.

<comment><USER38> This is probably a naive question, but the only use case I've come across of needing a flat-install option was to use Polymer.js web components (which is why so much of the polymer project relies on bower).

Aside from that, what is the use case that flat installs solve?

<comment><USER37> Not naive, and that's pretty much the primary reason. But for all web components in general, not just the Polymer flavor.

<comment><USER38> gotcha, that makes sense. My only expose to web components was polymer. Thanks for the clarification

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> > A new npm cache verify command that will garbage collect your cache, > reducing disk usage for things you don't need (-handwave-), and will do full > integrity verification on both the index and the content

Nice.

</comment><comment><USER40> _> Running npm while offline will no longer insist on retrying network requests. npm will now immediately fall back to cache if possible, or fail. (#15666)_

Finally! :-)

</comment><comment><USER41> "package-lock.json" can someone please define what it is and does, I've heard of shrink wrap, google doesn't reveal anything about this file, I have a vauge idea that it has something to do with shrinkwrap but don't know why it exists or if it's supposed to replace shrinkwrap or whatever. splainit!

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm really excited about links. Links will make things much easier for monorepos.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not able to update it to v5. npm install npm@latest -g doesn't update.

<comment><USER43> npm install npm@5 -g. Latest still points at 4.x currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It is not NPM, it is npm.

<comment><USER45> This is good point as it's the third element in their "breaking changes"

> npm will now scold you if you capitalize its name. seriously it will fight > you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Can someone explain the git semver thing ? How does it work?

</comment><comment><USER47> How is the _package manager_ for a language still iterating through major versions and making breaking changes nearly a decade after launch? Node is bizarre in that you have to follow its package manager so closely.

<comment><USER48> npm has to deal with scale: it's now the largest programming language package manager, and most project dependency trees have exploded in size as a result. Optimizing that led to yarn and to npm@5.

<comment><USER49> npm has to deal with scale because every single npm install goes to npm instead of a local cache of certain versions.

Bundler led to yarn. The JS community should start looking what other ecosystems do and have done (right and wrong).

Such a waste of time these past 20 years and it happens over and over.

<comment><USER50> I could be incorrect, but I don't believe Bundler was the first to lock and manage dependencies? I seem to recall using such tools before 2010. This isn't to take away from your main point by any stretch; only recently has JavaScript gone from "downright terrible" to "tolerable" and most of it is through doing what others already did, better, many years before. It still feels like a lot of the community doesn't have sufficient exposure to stuff outside their closure and people who work with that community's stuff are the worse for it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Distracted? Work Harder - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/25/opinion/sunday/distracted-work-focus-productivity.html <comment><USER2> Or, you know, your work is so difficult that it's be engrossing if you could get into a flow state in the first place - but you can't because your noisy, visually distracting open office environment finds a way to break your concentration every time you manage to load even a fraction of the problem into RAM.</comment>


Clojure in Unity 3D: Functional Video Game Development - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJr_TD1BtF0

<comment><USER2> Looking forward to experimenting with procedural geometry with this.</comment>


Galaxy S3 beats iPhone 5 for best device of 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/8301-33506_1-57557848-306/galaxy-s3-beats-iphone-5-for-best-device-of-2012/

<comment><USER2> I'm not surprised. Apple have really dropped the ball last couple of iPhone releases. The problem was the iPhone 5 wasn't a big enough reason to convince Apple lovers to upgrade, besides being a bit faster and having a larger screen than my iPhone 4, it's still a phone running the same boring iOS it always has. The Galaxy S3 is a glorious phone no doubt about it, I wonder if Apple are going to try harder with the inevitable iPhone 6?</comment>


15 Hot Programming Trends, and 15 Going Cold (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.javaworld.com/article/2084582/scripting-jvm-languages/15-hot-programming-trends-and-15-going-cold.html <comment><USER2> Jan 6, 2014 7:18 AM PT

pretty good prescience though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, updated the title to reflect the year.</comment></comment>


Libreboot X200 laptop now FSF-certified to respect your freedom - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/news/libreboot-x200-laptop-now-fsf-certified-to-respect-your-freedom

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice laptop for free software purists with Intel's nasty ME functionality stripped out.

[http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/x200.html](http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/x200.html)

<comment><USER2> That is a big win.</comment></comment>


New York Department of Financial Services Bitcoin Hearing - Live - <AUTHOR> http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=nysdfs

<comment><USER2> I am completely on board with Bitcoin, but I'm a bit amazed (for lack of a better term really) on how wealthy current Bitcoin participants will become when Bitcoin becomes ubiquitous.

It seems that it would be more fair that everyone just transfer their current personal value into bitcoin value to avoid the inflation effect.

There is no doubt that the current participants are creating incredible value for the rest of the world, and should be rewarded, but it's truly scary how much money they will have. I'd be interested to see someone do the math on how rich they would become, but I think it would be scary.

I feel that democracy is to politics as what bitcoin is to the economy, but our founding fathers were not turned into trillionaires.

My understanding is certainly limited, but I think the reality is plausible.

<comment><USER3> A few of the very earliest participants in the bitcoin community (who got in before the first big peak at $32) have 100K BTC.

As a rough order of magnitude estimate, if Bitcoin gets to be as big a thing as gold, then it will be worth about $10 trillion. Since there will be about 20 million BTC by then, those individuals will be worth about $50 billion. This is a lot of money to be sure, but there won't be many of those people, and this is not out of line with the world's very highest net worth individuals.

The people who got in after that peak will probably be worth at least an order of magnitude less. And if Bitcoin turns out to be a smaller deal than gold, it might "only" create fortunes worth 9 figures of USD.

<comment><USER4> Apparently Satoshi has around 1 million BTC [0] which is staggering plugging your numbers. That'd put him at $500 billion which is insane. Since you said 20 million BTC (less than the total there will ever be), we're talking within about 20 years right? It would be incredibly interesting to see what happens if somebody ends up with a theoretical worth exceeding the top 10 wealthiest people in the world, but I wonder whether the mystery of who he is could actually stop that happening. Also only 4 individuals are worth more than $50B so that's pretty incredible too. [1]

[0] [http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/bitcoin-mints-its-first- bil...](http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/bitcoin-mints-its-first-billionaire- satoshi-nakamoto) [1] [http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/](http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/)

<comment><USER5> I think it's pretty obvious at this point that Satoshi Nakamoto is just Gavin Andresen's pseudonym. Is there anything wrong with that assumption?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satoshi_Nakamoto)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Andresen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Andresen)

[https://github.com/gavinandresen](https://github.com/gavinandresen)

[https://twitter.com/gavinandresen](https://twitter.com/gavinandresen)

[https://plus.google.com/117494054859918211010](https://plus.google.com/117494054859918211010)

<comment><USER4> I haven't really researched either character, but Gavin seems to claim/imply he isn't Satoshi.

' This is quoted from the defunct Bruce Wagner Bitcoin podcast:

"Bruce Wagner : When was the last time you chatted to satoshi <laugh> Gavin Andresen: Um... I haven't had email from satoshi in a couple months actually. The last email I sent him I actually told him I was going to talk at the CIA. So it's possible , that.... that may have um had something to with his deciding " '

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113609.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=113609.0)

My reading of that thread is that it's common knowledge/expected that they're not the same person, but I certainly wouldn't claim to be sure.

<comment><USER6> That does very little to exclude him from the list of candidates potentially responsible for the Satoshi Nakamoto alter-ego.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Fred Wilson is right: "Regulate at the edges, but don't regulate the system itself"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I like the analogy of new small cryptocurrency companies with smaller community banks and their sensitivity to overbearing compliance costs.</comment>


Fidelity Now Selling Mutual Funds, Data Centers - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/06/03/fidelity-enters-the-data-center-business-with-centercore/

<comment><USER2> This seems very strange to me, but then again I thought Amazon was crazy with AWS.</comment>


German's Federal Government White Paper on Trusted Computing and Secure Boot - <AUTHOR> http://www.bmi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/Themen/OED_Verwaltung/Informationsgesellschaft/trusted_computing_eng.html

<comment><USER2> "8. Open standards Everyone, whether members of TCG or not, must be in a position to fully use all trusted computing standards for implementation in architectures, implementations, systems and infrastructures. No licensing fees (e.g. based on patent rights) may be charged for using the standards."

So then Microsoft's system where they charge for the key isn't compatible with this?</comment>


The Python IAQ: Infrequently Answered Questions - <AUTHOR> http://norvig.com/python-iaq.html

<comment><USER2> Quite dated now. Better solutions exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> For example?

<comment><USER2> Thought he left out the standard Queue module, but I guess he does have a link to it. Really should mention ipython in the shell question though.

Also, I would change some of the solutions to the more modern, pythonic styles that have evolved. And add in some newer questions.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does your company do performance reviews? - <AUTHOR> Share your company's performance review methods (or even link to your performance review forms), and your thoughts on them. <comment><USER2> My company uses quarterly reviews. Here are the metrics my company uses to review each developer:

1\. We have an in-house developed tool that tracks git and mercurial commits and calculates the test coverage and code quality for each individual developer.

2\. We use jira to track the number of points each developer burns (points are shared between developer, reviewer and QA). We also track the number of bugs each developer introduces because closing a bugfix is not possible without first assigning the developer who introduced the bug to the jira task.

3\. We use peer reviews where each team member rates each other team member on a scale from 1 to 5 (3 being considered sufficient) on aspects like availability, communication, reliability and result orientation.

4\. Team leaders offer subjective input on each team member.

Of course, many of the metrics will be skewed or won't reflect the reality, which is why the team lead has the right to make adjustments to the final mark.

This being said, one of my colleagues and friend was "forced" to quit the company because he scored really low on the jira burn rate metric. He was given a tremendously huge task which nobody cared to properly estimate and break into smaller tasks. As a result he spent 6 monts working on the equivalent of 2 weeks of estimation points. The management (including the team lead which is otherwise a great leader and an awesome person) didn't want to assume any blame for this.

<comment><USER3> "one of my colleagues and friend was "forced" to quit the company because he scored really low on the jira burn rate metric"

This sounds totally insane. I Cannot believe this happens in real world.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like justification for a decision made for less quantitative reasons.

Managers don't say, "So let's see who's the worst performer... it's Tom! Weird, he seems to be one of my best developers. Oh, well! The metrics say he's the worst. Off to fire Tom!"

<comment><USER5> You don't know many people who worked for Microsoft? They would let go the bottom 10% of their staff every year.

"Best to Worst Ranking" is the most toxic and destructive environments.

Manu Cornet famous organization chart is the best example of this. [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/%22Org_c...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/%22Org_charts%22_comic_by_Manu_Cornet.png)

<comment><USER4> I was under the impression that those rankings were created through a series of let's-sort-everyone meetings rather a pedantic application of metrics.

<comment><USER6> Yes they are, you are right. My company does them too, somewhat.

If you have to let go 20% of your staff, how do you do it? You have to rank people...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Large company, performance is based almost entirely on feedback from peers and those you report to with check-ins every 6 months. Overall score from 1-5 with a 3 being "meets expectations" and the most common rating by far.

The problem is that the feedback from superiors seems to be weighted _much_ higher so the peer feedback is almost useless so don't bother mentoring or helping someone get back in front of their tasking. This leads to a lot of I'm-working-so-hard theatrics instead of actually being efficient/effective and delivering product.

Combine this with "suggested targets" (quotas) for the number of people in each 1-5 bin, you end up with the usual stack ranking problem that getting on the shittiest project (and keeping it that way to ward off competition) and making it damn clear to your manager that they can't live without you is the best strategy.

<comment><USER8> If there was a more balanced weighting between superiors, peers and subortinates ratings, do you think these negatives outcomes would be avoided?

I just started at a company that kind of use this system. My first impression is that it is a good system and the weighting seems fair. But I would like to be aware of any potential pitfalls with it (not just for me, but for the company also).

<comment><USER7> >If there was a more balanced weighting between superiors, peers and subordinates ratings, do you think these negatives outcomes would be avoided?

Not really because the stack ranking would still turn everything into a knife fight. It might even be worse because people would blame their coworkers for getting another 3 rating instead of everyone being unified in our hatred for upper management and the performance system as a whole.

We recently had a big Pres/VP management shakeup and the new crew is supposedly looking into changing the performance reviews but who knows how far that'll go. But they did sort out our crazy hiring requirements almost immediately so fingers crossed that they'll set some more fires before things stabilize.

>But I would like to be aware of any potential pitfalls with it (not just for me, but for the company also).

My only tip is to find a project lead/manager who didn't drink the kool aid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh don't get me started.

Fairly big (>1000 devs) company. Performance reviews are twice a year.

In theory: before each cycle, an employee and a manager meet to discuss manager's expectations. If an employee "exceeds expectations" he or she gets a good rating. The rating is then approved and bonus and compensation is determined.

In practice: the rating is kind of determined by how employee's work contributed towards "important goals" of the company. This contributes to a deluge of half-assed work pushed into production just before the evaluation begins. Also it of course depends on performance of the other devs. The existence of the curve was never officially acknowledged but it is an open secret that it indeed exists.

The evaluation process is extremely opaque and shrouded in mystery. An employee (and his or her manager too) can never be certain that enough work was done for a particular rating as they are subject to correction at the highest levels of hierarchy (rumor has it that the CTO himself approves the final ratings of all developers above certain level). The process is also extremely long (easily exceeds 1.5 months) and taxing for line managers who have to defend their subordinates' ratings against cuts.

The meetings between an employee and a manager are very awkward. In theory the manager should discuss career prospects and deliver valuable feedback, but what is the point of delivering feedback on something that happened 5 months ago? Why would you wait for so long to do it? So everyone just goes through the motions during these meetings as quickly as possible.

The whole process is very inefficient. Frankly, it stinks. (Personally, I've fared fairly well so it is not an instance of sour grapes). My opinion it that the only reason it exists is because it provides the potential of almost authoritarian control and ample micromanagement opportunities.

I wonder, are my experience and feelings somehow special or is it a common thing in our industry?

<comment><USER10> Wow, I work in a big, non-software-focused, multinational company, in a mechanical engineer role. Your post describes our exact review process.

What more, it seems managers always set the expectation high, or vague, that way _everyone_ always get 3/5 (meets expectations). By now I'm almost 100% convinced that there is an official HR guideline that they are not allowed to give higher than 3/5 overall rating.

<comment><USER11> In my experience at huge companies, getting a 4 or a 5 is largely a paper- trail formality that managers bestow on people they are grooming for promotion. It's a political gift and a retention mechanism. Everyone else always gets a 3, whether they've been kicking ass or competently coasting.

Systems like these create strong disincentives to focus on job performance above and beyond a certain baseline, and strong incentives to focus on self- promotion, politics, and lobbying for sexy projects and allocations. Especially true when there is a forced curve or stack ranking involved. (Spoiler alert: there is almost always a curve, whether formally mandated by process, or informally expected by leadership.)

<comment><USER4> "We only hire the best."

"You can't _all_ get 5's!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Medium sized company (just shy of 20 devs) plus a lot of sales and other roles. We don't have specific performance reviews, only 1on1s where it's more about identifying personal pain points and defining goals.

I think the lack of pressure is the reason why this company is the market leader in its niche, has very low fluctuation and a very high quality code base. I used to work in a sweat shop where we had to justify every 15 minutes spent (via time tracking) ... never. Again.

<comment><USER6> Do you get yearly merit raises? Cost of living?

<comment><USER12> Can't really tell as I have only been on the team for about a year now, but I have been told that you get raises if you ask for them and have enough arguments to justify a raise. What about costs of living? We're based in Zurich, CH.

<comment><USER13> Normally (maybe it isn't the norm) employers give a percentage raise annually or bi-annually for to accommodate for the "cost of living going up"

<comment><USER14> Inflation in Switzerland has been negative for the last two years. Most companies did mot apply any cost of living adjustment, but I know some that have reduced base salaries in accordance to inflation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I recently moved from a large (40k employees) company to a small one (600).

Performance reviews at the large company always involve a lot of paperwork, self reviews, and hoping that your manager gives you good feedback. Reviews are rated from 1-5 where 3 is the midpoint and is considered 'acceptable'. Tbh, I started as an intern there, and I can recall three or four times someone scored 4+ off the top of my head. Getting a 3 was so trivially easy it was almost insulting. Getting a 5 once required a lot of work outside of the office and usually meant you wouldn't be able to get it again the following cycle.

Most of these incentive systems are just focused around being the best personal brand manager anyway, because they incentivize employees to sign up for the shittiest projects and then make a lot of noise and throw around a lot of money and bullshit to make sure everyone knows that they're singlehandedly saving the company.

At the small company, we mostly do small one on ones, and you set some yearly goals for each fiscal year that you get evaluated against. There aren't any 'metrics' involved, and it seems mostly like it's aggregation of subjective reviews from superiors and coworkers. This approach seems to work well for everyone. We have a really technical developer who doesn't really do the social game (and he's remote) and he does excellent every year. I'm more of a mix (I like to communicate with endusers and so on) and I did well this year too.

Frankly, I think the biggest thing is just getting out of big corporate environments. They're tough for mental health, and they're tough to get ahead in.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you've performance reviews, then you also most likely have some kind of metric, and if you've a metric people will start to game it.

A colleague of mine always said: you get what you measure.

<comment><USER2> Management at my company really likes to use jira estimation points as a metric, which is why I always argue for more points and occasionally snatch low hanging fruits (overestimated simple tasks). I'm aware it's stupid, which is why I always point it out, but nobody seems to care. I was the "most productive employee of the year" last year and while I didn't cheat by any definition of the word, it certainly did affect my priorities.

<comment><USER17> This. In fact, at one of the last companies I was at, an agency of about 20, devs were grouped into small teams (1-5) to work on different projects. While we used Jira points - these _internal_ teams had _different_ measurements regarding point count.

When I brought it up to various PMs and execs, I got the same answer - "that's the way it's supposed to work."

And they used these point counts and burndowns to analyze performance of each dev in comparison with the rest of the team as a whole!

So if you estimated 1 point for your story, but some other dev estimated 5 for their story, and they are essentially the same tasks just on different projects - that developer is 5x as productive as you are by their record.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A related question: Should you do them? They don't seem useful in tiny companies, where you can just see how everyone is doing, apart from informal "What is worrying you" conversations. How big a company you have to be for them to be useful/necessary?

<comment><USER4> It's hard not to have some sort of review process if you want to be able to fire someone. If anyone challenges their dismissal for performance reasons, you'll want a record of the "conversations" (1) you had. This is why a lot of review processes include some sort of sign-off by the parties involved.

(1) Scare quotes around "conversations" because I've never seen management approach an underperforming employee and then realize that _they_ had a big part in that. Conversations tend to be more two-way than that.

<comment><USER19> In our situation, which is a relatively small company, it's used to keep people energized, focused and well... happy. Without it, we had regular team meetings where people talked about frustrations they had (and it exploded at times).

I don't think having it around as way to fire someone is the right approach.

<comment><USER4> I'm a _huge_ fan of more informal one-on-one meetings. To the point where I will consider a move if I'm not getting enough time with my management. I don't consider those "performance reviews" though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The media have been very critical of Amazon's review process, partially fairly, but mostly not.

At the end of every year, I picked 5-10 people I wanted feedback from- teammates, people I've worked closely with, or people I genuinely wanted to get opinions from. They'd each receive an email that I'd requested their feedback and I'd receive around 10 requests for feedback from everyone who asked for mine. The only mandatory one: everyone reviews their boss.

As well, at any time throughout the year, "Anytime" feedback of an identical nature could be sent in. Usually, I sent these when someone had done something amazing and I worried I'd forget it before review time, or I don't work with them often.

Important to note: I can't ever read feedback given to me. I don't even know if anyone I requested feedback from actually gave it or not.

Each review itself took a lot of time to write, 20 to 60 minutes was normal for me. Everything was asked to be phrased in this way: Situation (what's the background on what happened?), Behavior (what did the person do?), Impact (what was the outcome, effect, etc?). You were expected to give a few good examples and a few bad examples.

At the end of all of this review writing, my manager would read through all of my feedbacks, and compile them into a single overall review with the common themes from many reviews.

Downside: bad managers exist. Here's one person who makes the entire decision and he's the only one reading your reviews. That's a lot of power and you need to trust your manager not to abuse it. Also, that feedback is anonymous to you. If someone is trying to sabotage you, you'd never know- but your manager would, as they can read who sent it.

Upside: if you're into personal growth, an annual review is candy. Here's an aggregate view of where you need to do better. With a good manager filtering out bullshit and finding the real patterns that matter, you got so much out of this.

On the other hand, it took like 2 days to write reviews, and you'd lose your manager for a week or two while he read and compiled.

Of course, I say all this and should be using past tense: due in large part to the media complaining that Amazonians are encouraged to "rat each other out", and that the feedback system was actually a toxic part of the culture, the company got rid of it all. Now you can only say short, nice things about each other and your manager has even more power that he'll never have to justify.

It was good while it lasted.

<comment><USER21> Ctl-V from above:

I know someone who works at Amazon just out of college.... out of 50 that started in June 17, they have 7 left... every week, people get rated and given a score out of 100%....every so often people are let go

<comment><USER20> That's the craziest thing I have ever heard of. What role are they in? Is this some kind of paid interview process?

Like, I want to believe you but if you're talking about normal everyday developers it would be more reasonable for me to believe you are making this up or misunderstanding something. It just sounds that weird to me.

<comment><USER21> I don't want to say too much because I don't want my friend to get in trouble (only 7 left!)....they work on the products in a major US city and aren't developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Although we try to stay away from "creating a process" for everything, we've gradually implemented a way for people to give feedback more organically. The thing is, it's not the tool, form or questions you hand out - it's how people use them and think about them.

Over a period of time we started using Impraise (impraise.com), although it's not the best tool - it helps people to force to take the time and leave there current mindset to focus on something like giving feedback (on an equal base, because some people are just very good at giving feedback and keep on talking, while others are struggling and need to write it down). Every quarter, you review 2 other people. People read it, interpret it and carry on. However, I sit down with them after everyone has filled in the questions on Impraise (which are not the default ones, but they're pretty straightforward, like: "how good is the quality of your colleague's work?"). This information is used as a base to allow me to ask even more questions, like: "do you agree with this statement?" or "what could you do to improve this situation this colleague is describing?". The result of this conversation are 4 things:

1\. self reflection,

2\. setting personal goals (which is mostly one of the things from the self reflection, getting more focus/attention than other things, which is not shared within the team),

3\. create and/or help out with team goals, something we should improve as a team and shared within the team,

4\. feedback on the process itself.

These results are written down as notes and then reflected on the next time we sit down.

We have some other tools, methods and things in place to have more of a continuous feedback loop - but it remains a living thing, rather than a set in stone method. If you have questions, you're always welcome to contact me :-)

<comment><USER22> Hi David, interesting to read your post. My name is Bas Kohnke, co-founder/CEO of Impraise (YC Summer 14). We are always looking for new ways to improve our product, so please feel free to reach me at email@example.com if you are willing to share your experience and ideas. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I have used this method at every startup I worked for. It will only work for companies that want to hire and keep good engineers. When you join the company, your manager will lay out your strengths and areas to improve to _get to the next level_ (in a direction you want to go) in the very first meeting. Then, she meets with you every quarter and refines the vision for growth. Between those meetings, she'll create opportunities for you to challenge yourself, shine, and grow. That's it. All we care about is ownership, accountability, and leadership -- and your peers will keep you in check. Our job as leaders is to remove speed brakers and avoid pot holes. I can't think of a better way than this -- "performance" reviews are meaningless.

</comment><comment><USER24> I highly recommend checking out Bryan Cantrill's talk from Surge 2013 - Leadership Without Management: Scaling Organizations by Scaling Engineers

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGkVM1B5NuI)

<comment><USER25> NSFW even with headphones due to some really funny moments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Currently they don't exist - I've asked for a yearly one, but I suppose they haven't found time to give me a review.

I've been at my current position (C# Dev) for almost a year and a half full time and I worked part time for almost a half a year.

This seems to be far from normal, but since this is my first job out of school I really just want to see:

\- If I'm performing to standard (Adding value) - which I think I am. \- If raises are a thing at this company or in general with reviews.

We seem to be shifting towards a more I guess you could call it an "agile" approach (due to our PM). Daily standup meetings talking about what we will focus on for that day, allocate time for it, and report back the next day.

<comment><USER26> You should really insist on a review. If you don't get feedback on how you're doing in your career, it's at your expense. My company has no formal process, I still force a review every year.

Also, I believe you should ask for a raise every year. Even if you've completely stagnated professionally, your salary is decreasing continuously with inflation.

Companies seem to take advantage of introverted people who are too afraid to speak up about perfectly reasonable requests, like clarifying your performance and goals. It definitely sounds like you're in that boat.

<comment><USER13> I've reached out via email 2-3 times and twice in person. At a _very_ informal meeting (about a project) I had mentioned it as well on 6/29, but nothing has been said to me since.

I'm not terribly sure how to go about forcing the issue when managers are unable to fit time into their schedule for me.

I wouldn't consider myself completely introverted, but I don't want to seem needy (ie: cutting into other people's busy days/schedules)

Hopefully I hear something back soon, but I'm not holding my breath.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Fortune 500s...

Rating 1 - 5 (1 best, 5 worst).

Management required to restrict to rating quotas. These kick-in at a span-of- control level of around FTE>50, and below that at the span-of-control manager to manage. For some departments there's increased flexibility. Some managers who really don't see the reason for filling their quota of 'good' (3) sometimes trade with other managers. 1: ~3-5% 2: ~23-25% 3: ~50-60% 4-5: rest.

Formal performance reviews done annually, with interim (6 month) review. Now is 6 month stage.

1-1s on a bi-weekly basis, always documented.

Formal performance review an opportunity to highlight and push to one's manager what they may have forgotten or fell from their consciousness.

</comment><comment><USER21> I know someone who works at Amazon just out of college.... out of 50 that started in June 17, they have 7 left... every week, people get rated and given a score out of 100%....every so often people are let go

</comment><comment><USER28> Have had two since I started at the place I'm at now. It's basically very nebulous "you're doing ok/you're not doing well in x" type reviews that they get from the departments you're contracted out too. Recommendations are usually "keep doing what you're doing/do more work/do work faster". You provide feedback forms for how you feel youre doing in various areas, but they're effectively useless as its the managers rebuttal that holds all the weight. There's rumours of career planning being integrated into the mix, but that's apparently been on the table for years with no change.

Had an associate of mine at the same company two weeks ago get a performance review (more of a contract since he had to sign it), that said he had to improve performance in a month or he'd be fired. The reasons? Too slow/too low quality, but no specific measurable metrics to meet that he'd be able to use to keep his job when re-evaluation comes up in a month.

Needless to say, performance evaluations aren't given a lot of thought here. Wish they were.

</comment><comment><USER29> We stopped doing them a number of years ago after a discussion between management and HR where we all came to the conclusion they were not beneficial.

<comment><USER20> So how do you decide on promotions, bonuses, raises, etc? All of that has to happen via some process. If you're not doing any kind of performance reviews then you're allowing managers to do it arbitrarily.

<comment><USER29> There is a process, driven by actual reality rather than the (in my experience) highly artificial formal performance review process. fwiw when I worked as a manager in big companies, HR always told us that raises didn't depend on performance reviews...

<comment><USER6> So what is the process? That's the crux of this question.

<comment><USER29> People talking to each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> We are a remote team, so metrics are very important for judging performance. Some of the most important metrics are: time online (huge one), PRs opened, PRs reviewed. There is a formal review process to give employees time to improve performance before an action is taken.

I find that even with all these formalities, actions tend to be totally up to the subjective judgment of management, just like any other company. Companies are not legally bound to abide by the rules of their own HR department -- HR is mainly there to provide an illusion of objectivity. In a conflict between leadership and rank-and-file workers, HR will always side with leadership. "Whose food I eat, his song I sing."

<comment><USER31> Why is time online big (assuming more means better)? I do remote too and I would never consider that to be important as long as the work gets done.

<comment><USER30> If you're employed full-time, the expectation is that you're giving your employer roughly 40 hours a week. Nobody can code continuously for 8 hours a day and be productive, but just being available is the bare minimum you can do to be considered "working."

I've never heard anyone get cool points at our company for being online _more_ than 8 hours a day, but being online less than that (without reason) is definitely frowned upon.

<comment><USER32> I don't see the point: it seems like the company you're at is more or less putting the infrastructure cost (rent, internet) on its employees and otherwise treating them as though they ought to be working as if on-premises in a "butts in the seat" style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> We do a 1-5 point based system bi-yearly, but I'm actually wondering how people respond to under performing coworkers. I feel weighed down a bit because a review is coming up and I can't imagine giving said person more than a 2, but he is also a nice guy and tries very hard while simultaneously making a mess of most things.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. We're typically asked to discuss negative feedback with managers beforehand and it's important to note that these reviews are not anonymous.

<comment><USER4> If a person is congenial and dependable there's usually a suitable niche in any large enough org. The sweet spot is where things are stable and include domain knowledge but aren't automatable yet.

Good team players that will get along with people and keep things running are _very_ worthwhile in my opinion. Not everyone need to be able to invent their own crypto currency from scratch.

If the problem is more severe, like an inability to code at all, then they might just be in the wrong line of work.

<comment><USER6> Well said. I have found such positions for people like this twice now in my career.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It doesn't. You may ask how then do they do raises? Largely, they don't. The only way they manage to attract and keep people for at least a short period (average tenure is short) is through the ever increasing value of the stock options. Those are only awarded when you first join however so for those who do manage to hold on for 4 years until they fully vest there is zero incentive to stay longer. This is a major fintech company.

</comment><comment><USER35> At Microsoft, (so the throwaway account). In theory: peer review + manager comment on : your work, how you help others, how you reuse work done by other. The reality: peer review is quite useless (that can help manager to give examples feedback but nothing more). Manager's opinion on your work is the only thing. So a big theorical system with bunch of HR documentation but a terrible / useless process at the end.

</comment><comment><USER36> Twice a year we do reviews. I have some KPIs I collect for my team, but most managers don't. We also have the standard HR matrix of 1-5 scaling, but I think it's actually quite effective at providing a framework.

Employees do self-assessments, then managers do assessments, then you meet for your review. The review is more about being on the same page + communicating future expectations.

</comment><comment><USER37> Yes; we have quarterly "check-in" reviews and a larger yearly review where salary is considered. The process consists of peer and self reviews. We used to have a rating system as well where in the yearly review you would get a certain rating out of five options depending on how you did. The rating portion was removed a couple of years ago.

</comment><comment><USER38> Would be interested to know what software people use for peer reviews?

<comment><USER6> Email

<comment><USER38> That definitely doesn't meet our anonymity requirement. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Large company. Performance reviews always come with a non-negotiable raise. The raise + budget issues result in 2-5 year gaps between employees getting them.

</comment><comment><USER22> Hey I'm Bas Kohnke, YC S14 alum and CEO of Impraise ([https://impraise.com](https://impraise.com)), a feedback based performance management solution. Having worked with different types of companies to revamp their performance management processes, I'd be happy to share some of our thoughts and experiences.

Internally, we run quarterly 360 degree reviews based on 3 questions: what should this person, continue, stop, and start doing. Each person comes up with their own goals and projects which they're evaluated on. In between reviews we share real-time feedback so that people always know where they stand and what they can do to improve - in this way review results are never a surprise. Team leads also hold regular 1-on-1s and check-ins with each team member (at least twice a month).

A few things we've learned:

\- Simply prompting people to share more feedback isn't enough. Education on how to formulate actionable feedback and how to take and internalize received feedback is essential for it to actually be effective

\- Strengths based feedback[1] is highly motivating

\- Reviews should always be followed up with 1-on-1 conversations during which a development plan is formed

\- Continuous feedback throughout the year is essential to keep everyone on track and ensure that people aren't blindsided during reviews

\- Continuous and 360 degree feedback can help combat bias[2] in performance reviews

\- If reviews are results based, goal-setting should always include equal input from the individual and their team lead

There's not a one size fits all approach to performance management, yet so many companies try to fit their organization into a standard model. Many companies are now customizing their own processes, picking and choosing the elements that work best for their size, industry, culture and the specific pains they want to solve. For example:

\- Ratings vs ratingless reviews

\- Anonymity vs non-anonymous reviews

\- Reviews linked to compensation decisions vs reviews focused solely on development

\- Companies allowing people to choose their own reviewers

\- Results vs competency based reviews

For advice on the different performance management trends we've seen working, feel free to reach out to us.

[1] [https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/constructive- feedback...](https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/constructive-feedback- that-doesnt-kill-motivation-performance-review)

[2] [https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/4-factors-hurting- you...](https://blog.impraise.com/360-feedback/4-factors-hurting-your- performance-appraisals-performance-review)</comment>


The Circus Leaves Town: Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus to Close - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/circus_leaves_town <comment><USER2> From the article: "In the year since the elephants left, Feld says circus attendance dropped precipitously."

This is a great lesson to businesses in general - know if your critics are actually your core customers. The overlap between people who protested elephants and the people who attended the circus was pretty small. The company ended up listening to a very vocal minority and then lost a lot of business from the quiet group of customers for whom the elephants were the major draw and who then stopped buying tickets.

This also applies to open source projects and brings to mind DHH's article [http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2012/rails-is- omakase.htm...](http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/2012/rails-is-omakase.html)

<comment><USER3> I understand what you're trying to compare it to, but I don't think that this is always a valid argument. If what attracts the core customers is wrong in and of itself, it's not an excuse to continue it.

I have fond memories of the Circus Parade in Milwaukee when I was a child, but it was relying on the animals to draw people in for the most part, and the training done for the animals really isn't good. Vocal critics not being attendees is somewhat irrelevant in this case (and in many cases), because the core activity is what is wrong; it's not just a matter of preference.

When it comes to invidivual preferences, there is some wisdom to "appease the core audience, ignore the rest". But there are a lot of cases that aren't as neatly covered by such sentiment as some seem to think

<comment><USER4> > If what attracts the core customers is wrong in and of itself, it's not an > excuse to continue it.

Tell that to all the illegal renters on AirBnB.

Edit: sorry that was a bit flip, but I don't think the conundrum is as easy as either of you have posed it.

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry but I don't even know what you're referring to, else I'd respond more completely. I can't really see the relationship between what you quoted and what you wrote.

<comment><USER5> There are several cities (NYC, Berlin?) where it is/was illegal to rent your apartment/condo for a short term, because then you're acting like a Hotel, but you're probably not meeting any of the hotel regulations, and you're not paying taxes that are specific to Hotels.

So. _> If what attracts the core customers is wrong in and of itself, it's not an excuse to continue it._

"Being cruel to elephants" is to "Running a circus" as "Breaking Hotel laws in your city" is to "Running an AirBnb listing"

Both of these things are something "Wrong" that are done as a core part of a business.

Now, I have no idea what jgalt's actual conclusion is, his post was wrapped in some combination of sarcasm and "well they do it too!!!". But his conclusion is probably to open a single-man copper mine in the mountains.

<comment><USER3> Thank you for your take on it. I won't try to argue it since I feel it unfair to make you defend a conclusion you yourself don't actually know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> An interesting theory I heard for why the circus folded now, rather than at some later date, involves the age of the circus train.

Rail cars are 'certified' to run on Class 1 railroads for 40 years post-build, and once they reach 40 years old they need to be inspected and have their running gear rebuilt. This allegedly costs around $150,000 per car, and only certifies the car for another 10 years. Based on the auction of the circus train, the circus owns/owned 127 cars.

So while the circus might have been solvent, if a large number of the train cars were coming up on a rebuild it might have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

Here is a reddit thread discussing it a bit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/5o3ih1/i_wonder_wha...](https://www.reddit.com/r/trains/comments/5o3ih1/i_wonder_what_will_happen_to_the_ringling_bros/)

<comment><USER7> This is a great example, though, of why 'EBITDA' is such a terrible metric of profitability. Depreciation (which is the way this rail car certification would likely be accounted for) is a real (if deferred) cost.

<comment><USER8> It's not a terrible metric. It's only bad for companies who have high debt loads, or companies who have to periodically upgrade costly equipment.

These downsides to EBITDA are well known and should weigh on the mind of anyone who looks at the metric.

For a company that rents all its equipment, EBITDA is a pretty good metric.

<comment><USER9> > It's not a terrible metric. It's only bad for companies who have high debt > loads, or companies who have to periodically upgrade costly equipment.

Right, ignoring depreciation and debt service is only horrible for assessing companies with significant depreciation or debt service.

> For a company that rents all its equipment, EBITDA is a pretty good metric.

Sure, if you don't have significant depreciation/amortization and debt service, EBITDA is just an approximationation of EBT, which is a perfectly good measure.

And EBT's a perfectly good measure even for companies _with_ debt service and depreciating equipment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Whether you're an animal rights activist or not, the fact of the matter is EVERYONE thinks it's wrong to abuse animals. People will go to great lengths to pretend animal cruelty isn't happening and the circus relied on secrecy over how its animals were treated to survive. Once video started coming out, it was the beginning of the end.

If you haven't seen any of the undercover videos and have doubts, a quick google search will find hundreds. For example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECspj0daAlE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECspj0daAlE)

<comment><USER11> >Whether you're an animal rights activist or not, the fact of the matter is EVERYONE thinks it's wrong to abuse animals.

That's not true. There's plenty of people who think animal cruelty and abuse is just fine. There's no shortage of people who abuse animals, for instance, so obviously they don't think it's wrong. They may not be a majority of the population, but they exist.

<comment><USER10> I think "plenty" is debatable. Most people are good at IGNORING animal cruelty (ie: where did my veal dinner come from?), but it is the exception that people actively think it's fine (dog fighting, etc). Once animal abuse is public knowledge (especially against certain more-beloved animals) it is hard for society to forgive. Sea World, the circus, puppy mills, etc. Those things are all going away now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think elephants actually added much to their show. I have taken my kids twice in last few years... once with elephants and another one more recently without and we definitely preferred the more recent one. If it all comes down to elephants they should really have no problem staying in business IMO. I even saw less protesters at the more recent one. Only reasoning I can think of this not working is if without elephants they have to rely on more humans and effects than before that may be more expensive to produce.

<comment><USER13> Serious question: Is the elephant thing your view or your kids' also? I loved the (now discontinued) Aladdin show at Disneyland, and the highlight of the show (judging from the crowd's reaction) seemed to be when the 'elephant' entered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I saw the last show for the "red team" in Providence, Rhode Island. While I have seen a number of Cirque du Soleil (CdS) shows over the last 10 years, I haven't seen Ringling Bros. (RB) in about 20 years. The difference I immediately noticed was the ticket price. A CdS show ranges anywhere from $40 to $120. My seat at RB, on the sixth row, cost $55. I understand the desire to keep the show accessible to all families, but the price disparity between the two companies was huge. The production quality was good, but not as high as that of CdS.

That said, I enjoyed the show and the fact that it is accessible to people at most income levels. Audience members were permitted to go on the performance floor 30 minutes before the show. We could interact with the performers, who were doing a few mini-shows, and get a much closer look. That sort of access costs over $100 at Cirque du Soleil.

Besides ticket price and production quality, another factor working against Ringling Bros. is the fact that everyone lives on the train. Entire families travel to every city. They have a school on the train. When everyone came out at the end of the show, there were at least 200 people of varying ages—babies to adults. That can't be cheap. I'm not sure if Cirque du Soleil does the same for their performers.

</comment><comment><USER15> Just my humble opinion, but I think the loss of the circus will actually not be a great help to the conservation of these wonderful animals.

Elephants are in the public imagination largely due to the circus and the zoo. We like elephants because we can actually go and see them, which makes us want to keep them around. No one really does anything [donate, protest] about certain endangered species, like the Saola because they aren't in the public eye. Elephants, rhinoceros and Tigers have very extensive programs to protect them, even large national parks, because there is large public support for their conservation. The panda likewise would simply be a curiosity and evolutionary dead end if it wasn't for human intervention.

Once the public doesn't even know what an elephant looks like, the public support will diminish. Certainly there has been many abuses in the circus [like in many other things human beings do], but I just hope that people don't forget about the elephants. I would say that one of the reasons that they haven't been hunted to extinction was due to the fact that many children remember with fondness these wonderful animals, and that contact they had with them was from the circus.

</comment><comment><USER16> A few of my friends have had similar experiences at the circus.

We all went when we were very young, so it's a whirlwind experience for kids.

Then as we got older -- like 8 or older -- it was better to go to the Zoo to see the animals.

</comment><comment><USER17> Last time I went to the circus it sucked. Half the show was on some TV with cartoon animals. No one pays $$$ for a ticket $$$ for parking, $$$ for a cup of soda to watch cartoons on a TV.

<comment><USER18> It's just another industry that needs to be disrupted. I'm with you on what we think of as "the circus", but there's no reason traveling entertainment can't change. My daughter is just old enough to be interested so we took her to the circus last year, but it was a circus put on by [http://www.smirkus.org/](http://www.smirkus.org/) and it was terrific. There's no attempt at professional gloss and it's not about selling plastic crap (there's a bit but it's fundraising for the camp) ; it was just teenagers from all around the country putting on a great performance.

<comment><USER19> It's already been disrupted, the disruptor is called Cirque du Soleil.

<comment><USER11> That's not a circus, it's a dance/art show.

<comment><USER9> Circus has been an evolving art form for a long time (starting out 250 years ago as pure equestrian shows); the contemporary circus genre of which _Cirque de Soleil_ is one of the more popular examples is a fairly new development with circus, but certainly recognizable as an example of it that has close ties to it's immediate predecessors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Good riddance.

I've never liked the circus.

1) I know it's very individual, but when it comes to the arts (as opposed to work), I've always liked soulful performance over replicability. I'd rather take Bob Dylans or Tom Waits terrible singing (while excellent songwriting), over kick-ass scales and guitar riffs of Dreamtheater (the circus in this scenario).

While I can appreciate the skill behind Yngwe Malmsteens playing (or more current examples), or doing flips 20 feet in the air between hanging in rings, it's not something I enjoy watching/hearing.

2) Clowns are creepy, and I don't like slapstick.

3) The concept of the circus is 250 years old (in its modern form), and just in the last 10 years you can see more impressive feats on youtube (or some street corners), where everyone can get a venue.

4) Animal cruelty.

TLDR; It's antiquated and serves no purpose anymore (IMHO).

<comment><USER21> Cirque de Soleil is still around, but they cater to people who want a classy, but more kid friendly, and arguably more consistently entertaining alternative to theater.

<comment><USER22> More kid friendly? I would say the opposite they are more adult friendly then Ringling.

Also Glob Trotters, Disney on Ice and Marvel Live have taken over and owned by the same company.

<comment><USER21> More kid friendly and consistently entertaining than theater, not Ringling. I say more consistently entertaining, because you never know what you're going to get with theater. .

<comment><USER22> Theater is NEVER kid friendly unless it is Barney Live. Even the High School Productions are kind of over the top for my taste. The last one I saw and I knew better was "Rent" for High School. Then the next year was "Chicago".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Creator's Update broke DLL loading and it won't be fixed until Fall - <AUTHOR> http://blog.marcocantu.com/blog/2017-august-creators-update-loading-tokyo-release-1.html <comment><AUTHOR> TLDR from the blog post and its links:

* Creator's Update changes handling the import address table (this is the bit that specifies dependencies, such as "I need Bar() from foo.dll") by parallelizing loading it

* It doesn't handle a class of import table behaviour where there are multiple tables per DLL. This is not strictly in the PE format spec, but has been done for twenty years by Delphi and C++Builder - ironically as a performance optimisation - and there are many thousands of apps with this table format. Usually Microsoft keeps compatibility, especially when there are thousands of apps and developers affected by a change.

* Running an app will make its startup slower, as it can load and unload the DLLs it uses many times - sixty or a hundred times

* Debugging an app built with these settings is unusably slow, because the attached debugger will load and unload debug info each time the DLL is loaded and unloaded. This even happens in Visual Studio

* It affects many thousands of developers, and uncountable number of apps - note for apps, the slowdown is less visible than for developers, a user might not notice. Developers definitely do.

* Despite being aware, it's not yet fixed, many months after Creator's was released. It may be in the Fall update. Many developers have had immense troubles for months.</comment>


Ask YC: Feedback on startup: learnitlists.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.learnitlists.com/

<comment><USER2> 1\. There's something very wrong with the English/German translation. It's frequently not finding the German equivalent and just printing the English word. e.g. It claims that the German translation of Cook is Cook.

2\. When presenting a word like Cook you really need to distinguish between nouns and verbs. There's a big difference between der Koch and kochen.

3\. You don't present the gender of any of the words. This is very important if you are to learn almost any language other than English. You just can't make the adjectives etc. match if you don't know the gender (and there are words that change meaning with gender: e.g. le tour and la tour in French).

4\. I think it would be very helpful to have the words actually spoken outloud by your widget.

5\. My experience of learning a foreign language to fluency is that there's no substitute for speaking to people. For my first months in France I was constantly asking people in shops, the street, etc. to explain bits of French to me. For example, I'd pick a word in a newspaper headline and ask the baker what it meant. This really helped. Currently I'm learning German and find myself asking people Wie sagt man X auf Deutsch? a lot.

<comment><USER3> Thanks .. we are working on most of what you request. The sound should be the premium feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing that bothers me is clutter, clear messaging should be in place on the homepage.

The _multiple_ pictures are eye grabbers so they take away from the text that matters. Like for instance, I think "You can now learn a few words of your chosen language every day." Should be WAY BIGGER AND IMPORTANT.

I like easy, as does everyone else, so make juice worth the squeeze.

Like : <http://www.chatterous.com/> <http://coordinatr.com/> <http://script.aculo.us/> <http://foamee.com/> <http://rescuetime.com/forbiz> <http://heysan.com/>

I think those have clear messaging and purpose. I dont have to think what it is really...I think this will increase your user signups. As well as making that sign up button _WAY_ bigger.

Additionally, that sign up page it has "I am Learning" then an options like "German <> English"...What's that about? Why not just ask me what language I want to learn and what language I speak don't confuse me... I mean what does that even mean anyway...

Also, when I click one word and it loops through the list, I meant for the word to translate on the other side, not have the flashing red words in the top left...

And what's with the poll? lol

That's everything from me. Sorry if I tore you up, but hey at leasts it's honest feedback, right?

<comment><USER3> No sorry at all :) And thanks for the inspirational links and a very concrete critique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great idea, here's some thoughts: \- I signed up and it put me in a google gadget widger page, but it's not actually a google gadget. <http://widget.learnitlists.com/orkut/index/google_gadget> is the url I am talking about. It was just kind of confusing to be put in there

\- I was tossed into it without any explanation and words began revealing themselves if I clicked on things but I could not type in the words I knew (Or is that not how it works?) It looked like I was supposed to begin typing/guessing the words but it doesn't seem to be the case.

Great front page though, made me want to try it right away

<comment><USER3> Thanks .. we will provide some kind of explanation as we need to make the service more user friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Not too useful for lower-level Japanese (many many people, myself included) without providing optional readings for the kanji. (The workaround is a browser extension like RikaiChan.) 2\. Front page is cluttered 3\. Didn't want to register, did anyway 4\. How do I get it on my iGoogle page? It wasn't clear after about 15 seconds, which is way too long. It should have given me a choice just after I hit "go".

<comment><USER6> Also: when you click to show the answer, it shouldn't fade in. It should show up instantly. Fading out is okay. And the animation at the top that starts to play every time I open the page? My GOD, it needs to go away. It probably won't last long on my iGoogle page because of that. If it's an important part, at least keep the transitions snappy. Fading == visual distraction, use if VERY sparingly.

<comment><USER3> We have big discussions inside our team about the widget appearance, hopefully we upgrade the widget soon so it is straight, clear and easy to use. Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Learnitlists is a startup of a friend of mine. It is curently in beta, but they already have 10K users. He asked me to post it here to get your feedback. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hello all,

The english/german translation has now been verified by a professional translator. We are now in the process of having every language verified. We've added info about the word type - noun, verb etc. Likewise, gender. We've added the speaking teacher to say the word, plus there is a facility for native speakers and learners to make recordings of their daily words - this is particularly important for languages where a text to speech engine is not available, such as Welsh or Hindi. Immersion is the best way to learn a language, but having a bank of 1000 words to pull from really helps comprehension in the early days. Look out for our new release on the 1st August. Many thanks for your feedback, Nicola

</comment><comment><USER7> Hi, this is Nicola from Learnit lists.

We are currently running a private beta test of the next release of the widget, after identifying many of the concerns raised in these posts in previous research.

If you would be interested in helping us with a private beta test of the next release, please contact me on info at learnitlists dot com.

Many thanks for your time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Great Idea: learning another language without much effort, certainly need improvements. Question how do you make money?

</comment><comment><USER9> Some of the widgets seem slow to load. Don't want to register to try it out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for comments. We (=learnitlists.com) plan on improving the widget, now 2.0 version is being developed.

I would especially appreciate your thoughts about the user interface. Is the widget easy to use?

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks to everybody for honest feedback. That is what I want to hear :)</comment>


"Piracy" sounds too sexy, say rightsholders - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/03/piracy-sounds-too-sexy-say-rightsholders.ars

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't they coin the term in the first place?

While it always seemed a bit over the top to equate the rather nasty crime of piracy with copying stuff, calling it "sexy" is a sad reflection on society.</comment>


Show HN: Deep Learning Our Way Through Fashion Week - <AUTHOR> https://inside.edited.com/deep-learning-our-way-through-fashion-week-ea55bf50bab8 <comment><USER2> As someone who is 'in touch' with Fashion Weeks around the world, I'm more than simply impressed by this experiment.

More like massively impressed! But, that's just by the experiment. The author(s) has/have made no effort to convert this into a workable proposition, barring a feeble mention at the end of how it could work.

Indeed, your work shows that it works rather well. In that case, why not get in touch with a dev, and you'll have an app running on these principles in next to no time!

Whether as proof of concept, or monetised, that goes way farther than a mere article that doesn't seem very much appreciated either. At least here on Hacker News, going by the number of likes.

Your article certainly deserves kudos, but there's so much more you're leaving on the table :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the message! You are right, these kind of methods have a lot of potential. This specific project was setup as an experiment, as part of our wider work on retail data.

Our software in fact uses similar methods to help retailers understand what's selling or what's not selling, to spot trends and figure out pricing. We'll be teaming up with our in-house dev team to bring these new experiments into retailers daily work in the future!</comment></comment>